hard cover

Illustrations: Colour plates
Text and Illustrations by Phillip A Clancey

Many ornithologists have made the kingfishers their speciality, but not until now have the African species had a book devoted exclusively to them. In The Kingfishers of Sub-Saharan Africa, Dr Phillip Clancey, doyen of southern Africa ornithologists, has taken the opportunity to record a fascination with this colourful family that had its genesis back in the early 1930s when he saw his first Common or River Kingfisher - a luminescent bluegreen flash - flying arrowlike just above the surface of a partially icedover small western Scottish river.

Twenty kingfisher species qualify for inclusion in this book. Exquisitely detailed colour plates portray each in its natural surroundings. The text includes a comprehensive account of each birds' distribution, status, habitat, vocalisation, behaviour and breeding biology in addition to anatomical description and measurement and an account of geographical variation and subspeciation. Dr Clancey deals expansively with the established historical background to the discovery and naming of the Afrotropical species and investigates the possible ancestral forms behind the initial colonisation of the continent and its adjacent islands. He also examines the evolution of species and their possible extinction in an Afrotropical context. Some subspecific arrangements have been recast, thus making a contribution to the standard literature on a singularly exciting and decorative family of birds.

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